Adam Blitz
CEO & Co-CIO, Evanston Capital Management · 2 appearances on the record.
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investorexecutivefounderevanstoncap.com ↗
Adam Blitz leads executive management, investment research, and portfolio construction at Evanston Capital Management, an alternative investment firm specializing in multi-manager hedge fund strategies. Prior to co-founding Evanston Capital in 2002, he served as Head Trader at AQR Capital Management and worked at Goldman Sachs.
44statements → 5claims → 2claims resolved → 3.59/5average certainty → 2.32/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 4said about them ↓
2 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 3 not checkable as stated how the 5 claims stand · each chip opens the sources
2 predictions · 3 assertions · 8 opinions · 21 insights · 10 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 5 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 2 are resolved, and 3 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.
The record, in short
What the tape says about how Adam argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.
Their most notable supported claim
Blitz: SVB crisis triggered a violent two-year Treasury squeeze via illiquidity
“You saw in March of this year where you had a pretty violent move in the two-year bond, one of the most liquid assets in the world. Many macro managers were positioned in that bond. They had to get out of that position when the Silicon Valley Bank news hit. Mo…”
How they sound: not measured why? →
We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of Adam Blitz on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.
Everything Adam Blitz said on Capital Allocators that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →
Blitz: Popular short equity volatility strategies are a very risky proposition
“You know, I'd say one, I'd call it maybe an orange flag or red flag on the equity volatility side is you're seeing a lot of people today go, go explicitly short equity volatility and it's being packaged as a quote unquote alternative strategy. We think that th…”
Blitz: Market liquidity risks are underrated due to superficial intraday churn
“I think liquidity risks right now are underrated and underappreciated. There's a lot of optics of good liquidity in markets. But a lot of that liquidity, especially in equity markets, is just day trading back and forth, and if you need to get out of a fairly s…”
Blitz: Multi-Strat Risk Systems Create Exponentially Understated Crowded Risk
“I think some have what optically seem like good risk systems that are very backward looking. You have lots of people using the same risk systems. I think it can lull you into a false sense of security that can make you feel like, hey, I can lever up my portfol…”
Blitz: Passive and pod shop flows create alpha vacuum for stock pickers
“So what's happened the last 1012 years, you've had a lot more money flow into passive investments versus active investments, and you've had a lot of money flow into the platforms, which Not to paint a broad brush, but generally are shorter term traders. And so…”
Blitz: 100% long by 60% short is optimal long/short equity exposure
“So there's kind of a sweet spot in the middle where there's enough exposure and let's call this a hundred long by 60 short as sort of a sweet spot, if you will. Depends a little on the volatility and dispersion of the area. You can probably go a little lower t…”
Blitz: The illiquidity premium has inverted into an illiquidity discount
“Somewhere along the way, the last five years or so, the
Illiquidity premium somehow turned into an illiquidity discount.
I don't really understand it.
Used to be you demanded a higher return to lock up your capital, to lose the ability to make a change in mana…”
Blitz: Recent flood of private illiquid managers will fail to meet expectations
“Many managers have come out recently to meet this demand, and we just don't think the results collectively are going to be what people want, but they might not really care because the people in the seats making those decisions might change by the time the poor…”
Blitz: Avoid top-performing distressed debt managers chasing low-return risk
“I'd argue in the recent period managers who've done great, you would probably want to be more cautious of the managers who've done sort of mediocre because they might be chasing risk rewards that aren't very attractive.”
Blitz: Long/short equity offers the greatest manager diversification among hedge fund strategies
“We actually think long, short equity is the strategy where you get the most diversification among underlying managers.”
Blitz: 90% of long/short equity managers add no value after fees
“And I mean, I would caveat that with, you know, we think 90% of them probably add no value net of fees.”
Blitz: Top long/short equity managers face high alpha prospects from ETF flows
“For the 10% who are really good though, we just think that the distortions between individual stock prices and their fundamentals is just going to continue to grow because it's going to be influenced by ETF flows and index flows and things like that, and so fu…”
Blitz: SVB crisis triggered a violent two-year Treasury squeeze via illiquidity
“You saw in March of this year where you had a pretty violent move in the two-year bond, one of the most liquid assets in the world. Many macro managers were positioned in that bond. They had to get out of that position when the Silicon Valley Bank news hit. Mo…”
Blitz: Repeatable Macro Alpha Comes From Trade Structuring, Not Thematic Bets
“So the thing that we think is repeatable is having an edge in trade structuring and implementation. So basically instead of saying, I'm going to put all my eggs in the Euro basket or put all my eggs in the basket of the tenures going up, sort of view things th…”
Blitz: No-hurdle incentive fees cost allocators 80 to 100 basis points
“With short rates going up, especially in the long short equity space where people are earning short rebates now of call it four to five percent macro strategies where people are earning that on unencumbered cash, really without any skill, the manager is off to…”
Blitz: The average hedge fund adds no value net of fees
“I think the industry as a whole, and we, we've always felt the industry as a whole does not really add much value, if any value, net of fees. So the average manager isn't very interesting.”
Blitz: Real estate offers high alpha due to limited security-level scrutiny
“A sector like real estate is sort of a boring sector, right? There's not that many people who are looking security by security and saying, you know, here's the characteristics of REIT A versus REIT B, right? It's not a particularly exciting area, but it's one …”
Blitz: Bottom-up manager selection beats top-down asset allocation in hedge funds
“Much more bottom up. You know, we think the scarce resource are really great, great managers. And, you know, we've learned this the hard way, right? When you try to say, here's my view of the world, let's shove a mediocre manager in to fit that view of the wor…”
Blitz: Allocators should redeem immediately when a manager's passion deteriorates
“If you start to sense, boy, the mentality of the manager is changing or something about their strategy or something about their love for the business is kind of Changing for the worst. Even if they're going through a drawdown, you're still better off probably …”
Blitz: Allocators should add to underperforming managers and trim top performers
“You want to be reducing when someone's doing well. You want to be adding when someone's doing poorly if everything else, all else is equal. You want to be investing in a new manager, at least new for our portfolio after a period in which they've been strugglin…”
Blitz: Evanston prefers early-stage managers because principals are hungrier
“That often leads us to early stage managers who aren't managing a lot of money. The principals of the firm are hungry at that time, and there's not many good ones like that out there, but those are the ones we tend to prefer.”
Blitz: Hedge fund return expectations increase linearly with short-term rates
“I think the total return expectation for most hedge fund strategies, like Craig said, has gone up linearly with a level of short rates, even without any change in skill from the manager perspective”
Blitz: Higher base rates could restore hedge funds to endowment portfolios
“It's very hard to include a hedge fund strategy, even if it has a very high sharp ratio or risk adjusted return, if the total return is only three or four percent. But now that we've hopefully cleared that threshold, at least from an expected perspective in mo…”
Blitz: Low gross and net exposures destroy hedge fund returns after fees
“A lot of long short equity managers actually run at too low of an exposure, both gross and net exposure, and you need such a tremendous amount of stock picking alpha to overcome that cash drag, to overcome the fees that they charge in order to generate somethi…”
Blitz: Catastrophe reinsurance offers compelling, uncorrelated risk premiums
“The niche strategy that's interesting right now is in catastrophe reinsurance. So you've had a lot of hurricanes and other perils over the last five years, obviously for good reason, a lot of concern about climate change. So the demand to sort of reinsure agai…”
The other half of the tape: Adam Blitz's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 4 times in 3 episodes on Capital Allocators. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Ted Seides 4
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
2022 1 mention in 1 episode
2021 3 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
Appearances (2)
| Episode | Date | Speaking time |
|---|---|---|
| Hedge Fund Master Class – Craig Bergstrom, Adam Blitz, and Dan Fagan (Capital Allocators, | May 29, 2023 | 18m |
| Adam Blitz – Inside Hedge Fund Allocation (Capital Allocators, EP.17) | Jul 17, 2017 | 48m |